Jo Raquel Tejada Welch (Sep. 5, 1940 – Feb. 15, 2023). Top left: audition for the role of Mary Ann in the television show “Gilligan’s Island” (1964). Top right: standing in the blue skirt with Elvis Presley in “Roustabout” (1964). Bottom left: with John Richardson in “One Million Years B.C.” (1966), the role which catapulted her to stardom. Bottom right: entertaining troops in Vietnam with Bob Hope’s USO show (1967).
Thomas Edison led a Navy advisory board during WWI which evaluated suggestions submitted by the public for protecting surface ships from attack. When none of these ideas seemed practical, Edison conducted his own research. His work led to the creation in 1923 of the Navy’s first permanent facility devoted to producing new technologies (the Naval Research Laboratory). Above, left: Edison at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1915. Right: Edison's smokescreen experiments, Long Island Sound, Aug. 1917.
Former AZ Senator Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), long considered the hallmark of conservative Republicanism, is a lesson in the complexities of the human character. Goldwater was a lifetime member of the NAACP and a financial backer of the National Urban League’s Phoenix chapter. He also advocated military and school integration before they were legal re…
